


Break for Me

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Bureaucratic Booty Calls, Comfort Sex, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Guilliman being a busy-body, M/M, Relationship stand-ins, The Crimson Fist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-02-22 19:31:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2519228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My favorite thing to write over and over: someone tells Sigismund to shut up and have a hug.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> cross-posted from [tumblr](http://adepta-astarte.tumblr.com/post/98922726287/i-had-been-thinking-about-more-talon-fanfic-but)

Lord Protector of the Imperium, a title despised by many, including the one who held it. Sigismund would never forgive him the falling out he’d had with his brother, however second-hand his indignation, but he was a professional.

It had one advantage in protocol, he had to admit, in that he didn’t have to pretend that a Master of a Space Marine Chapter could stand equal to a primarch, like Guilliman’s farce claimed. (Sigismund wasn’t a thinker, but he was hardly unaware of the most obvious of Guilliman’s layers of intention: he was planning for his own death, the deaths of his brothers, the death of everyone currently alive in the galaxy, and generations past that. He was old enough now to not be able to argue with that.)

The way other Chapter Masters treated him, especially those from other Imperial Fists Successors, must have seemed natural and obvious to them, and perhaps it once would have to him. (Before. He was unworthy.) He felt like breathing a sigh of relief to follow the urges genecoded into him to submit to a primarch and let Guilliman lead their discussion of deployment.

What he was unprepared for was Guilliman setting down his goblet of wine on the table between them and saying, ‘High Marshal, I am about to be very rude.’

‘I’ll let you have your piece before challenging you to a duel, my lord, unless you are suggesting I should do so pre-emptively and save the trouble.’

Guilliman’s lips quirked that he took that in the humorous spirit it had been intended. ‘I have no complaints to make with the operational efficiency of the Black Templars.’

‘Thank you, my lord. I am feeling very insulted.’

‘I wasn’t finished. I have no censure to offer, only that I worry for you.’

‘We are weapons. To die in battle is our purpose.’

‘Not your knights, you. We were never made to feel fear or sorrow or betrayal, but then many things were never meant to happen.’ Guilliman moved to sit beside him, steely blue eyes staring into his own. ‘I am not the one who lit the sun and stars for you. I am not the one whose face you need to see, whose words you need to hear. My comfort to your pain will never change that, but accept it anyway. Let me give you this.’ Guilliman’s hand was heavy on his shoulder.

‘My lord...’

‘I overstep my bounds, High Marshal. I disrespect your title, the very one I forced upon you. I presume too much. Personally rather than professionally, I hurt you with this, a hint but not enough. Never enough or what you really need. I know all these things. Will you trust me anyway, with yourself?’

‘I...’ Sigismund swallowed, wanting to jerk himself away, wanting to run. He wondered if this was what fear felt like. He’d never felt it in battle, only that once. That moment of anticipation when he realised how Dorn would react, before all that was left was grief and hindsight. ‘My lord primarch...’ No, not _his_ lord. That was the start of the issue. ‘I am yours to command.’

Guilliman’s hand on his shoulder tightened, but then pulled back. ‘This is personal, Sigismund. I ask this of you, not your station. I ask it for you, not just so you can fulfil that station, but because it grieves me.’

 _You don’t know,_ Sigismund thought without saying. He didn’t know exactly how much Guilliman knew, had figured out in whatever ways he had, from every hint on Sigismund’s face or in Dorn’s words or wherever, but he kept his secrets and silence even if that might well be closing the barn door after the horse was already gone. _I deserve it._ ‘What do you want from me?’

‘What I want from this is personal satisfaction, because I am not as heartless and without empathy as many say. We have never known each other well enough to be especially close, so I say this for my brother’s sake. I don’t believe I can “fix” you, and much else, but I ask your indulgence that you might stop pretending and trust me.’

‘Trust you with what, my lord? I have deeds and duties I have been tasked not to speak of, even to you.’

‘I would never ask it. I ask you to break for me.’

 _I’m already broken,_ he could have said. But his breath caught as he contemplated the entirely of implications and what was being offered. To break in front of someone, to not be alone with his shame and all-consuming grief, to be put back together, not unbroken, but with compassion he didn’t deserve rather than his body eventually growing numb again to the emotions and memories wracking it or managing to replace all with the distraction of righteous anger and hatred.

‘I...’ He couldn’t tell if he shook. Everything felt too far away for that, like it was happening to someone else. Guilliman saw, Guilliman always saw, and he must have seen it for what it was, because his arms closed around Sigismund and suddenly it was he who was tied to this body and this life.

His body shook with tension, combat hormones flooding his system because his conditioning didn’t understand what was going through his conscious mind, only his distress. Guilliman brought him to his chest--a primarch’s chest--and ran a hand through his short hair, waiting patiently for the shakes to become sobs.

His eyes were dry, but his muscles clenched and ached as he clung too tightly, leaving bruises that healed in a moment but seemed a sacrilege. The cognitive dissonance hurt between his primarch/not his primarch, the part of his subconscious that wanted to imagine this was his father, forgiving him, and knowing the lie of that. Guilliman had offered what he was, nothing more, and that was the only chance Sigismund had of standing this.

‘There you go,’ Guilliman said into his hair. ‘Let it out.’ Not _It will be alright._ He just held him, and waited.

An Imperial Fist (or a Black Templar) would never pretend. Guilliman and Dorn looked more alike to each other than many of their brothers, and many thought them the most akin in spirit, but the gulfs between them were deceptively vast. It would never be who he wanted, who he needed, but it was this: someone, anyone, saying you are not alone in the void.

‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked again.

‘Because you deserve it. No, you don’t have leave to contradict me. Because you are strong and true, fierce and loyal. You are good and worthy and you don’t deserve the pain you bring yourself with your regrets. We all have them, so I can only offer you the counterbalance of my words. Your life has served the Imperium.’

He had to say something. He couldn’t think of anything, except a litany of _no, no, no_ that had been forbidden to him, as an actual explanation was. ‘Do you,’ he chocked out, slow and measured, ‘have a script of exactly what to say to an Imperial Fist?’

‘Yes,’ Guilliman replied easily, making no point of semantics in the VIIth being the VIIth still. ‘I chose my phrasing based on what I think you need to hear from what I know of your brothers and your geneseed, compared to what I might say to a Space Wolf. I also mean it.’

He wanted to be angry--he was angry--but breathing in the scent of a primarch, he couldn’t rage, couldn’t be anything less than obedient. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. To Guilliman for not being the person he wanted him to be? To Dorn, of course. Such useless, meaningless words that would never buy atonement.

Guilliman sighed, what Sigismund unconsciously recognised as an ‘I will not speak ill of my brother, but...’ sigh. ‘No one falls out of love because they tell themselves they _should_ , you know that?’

Sigismund couldn’t breathe, couldn’t process a single thought or reaction. There was only light, only gold, only the Dorn in his mind who was everything to him. He would never deserve forgiveness: not just because what he’d done was unforgiveable, but because in his heart he knew he’d do it again and again, give up his honour and betray his lord, anything Sigismund had been able to be at his side in that moment when it really mattered, however reviled his presence was. Anything for the love he bore and had once been offered to him before it had been renounced.

It wasn’t hope. It was only more pain, knowing the pain his very existence caused the one he’d wanted to protect from all sorrow.

Guilliman held him gently, soothingly, calm and patient and so kind it only hurt. He brushed a kiss against Sigismund’s forehead.

He wanted to ask, _Is there still more for you to torment me with? When will you put me back together? How?_ He could not be so weak. He could not be this pathetic, mewling thing with his face buried in Guilliman’s neck, lost and passive. Why couldn’t he just be left to kill xenos (surety, simplicity, purpose) until he finally, mercifully, bled out?

It felt good to be held, like something precious and cherished. How could you do that for someone you’d barely met? The answers he could think of where two: to manipulate them and because it was the right thing to do. He suspected both were true, at least in Guilliman’s mind. It would be so easy to relax into it, to give himself up to the primarch.

He leaned up to kiss him, wild and desperate and totally out of line, but he didn’t care and Guilliman didn’t chastise him for it, only smiled against his lips. He wanted something he could understand, and he’d always found lust easy and familiar, unlike love.

‘Do you want this?’ Guilliman asked, not going to go forward without explicit confirmation even if Sigismund had started it.

Of course who he wanted was Dorn. He had always wanted Dorn, from the first moment he’d seen him. He’d done penance for it, then stopped when Dorn showed him favour even if he didn’t take him to his bed, then punished himself for it again when he found himself unworthy of even dreaming about his touch. But he wanted the Lord of Ultramar too, enough for himself and not just as a stand-in for his brother, wanted the purely physical enjoyment of it. He’d hardly been chaste from casual flings over his lifetime even when his heart was set on one.

‘Yes.’ And, because he was the supplicant here, ‘Please.’

Guilliman pulled him close again in response and tilted his head back. Oh fuck, Guilliman hadn’t even been kissing back before, that was the only explanation for how this could steal his breath from his lungs as it did.

Still, he had to ask, as he was released to pull back panting, ‘My lord, are you doing this because...?’

‘It’s flattering to be wanted, and you are, after all, very beautiful.’

Beautiful, what a thing to call a Space Marine. Yet, he remembered being able to see what people say in him, arrogantly, the strength and confidence in his movements, the harshness to his features that took them further from the traditional handsomeness he would have had had he not been an Astartes, yet enhanced them to an Astartes’ own eyes.

The way Guilliman kissed and how his hands drifted down to support Sigismund’s lower back and cup his hips authenticated his response. That was alright. That was something he could accept. He could handle it for not involving feelings, even as he knew the thirteenth primarch never stopped thinking, had probably planned all this, was giving him this because he thought it would be good for him. It was so easy and natural to submit to it, to move with the primarch’s touches and bask in his very presence, to shiver at the very idea of being able to please him.

Sigismund pressed them together very differently from how they’d been before, arching to kiss him and urge his hands lowers, moaning as Guilliman took the invitation to squeeze his ass.

Guilliman pulled back after a minute, to Sigismund’s confused groan, but smiled at his playfully. He couldn’t have resisted being gently pushed back against the arm of the couch if he’d wanted to, but Guilliman’s intention only slowly dawned on him as he worked his duty-robes off and leaned down. ‘Just relax,’ he instructed, and Sigismund struggled to obey as he took him into his mouth.

A hoarse cry escaped his lips. He couldn’t possibly tug on a primarch’s hair, so his hands fisted into the cushions around him for something to hold onto. Sigismund didn’t know how much experience he had because it went without saying that a primarch was going to be excellent at everything.

Wet, hot, he so easily took him all the way in and held his hips still. Oh Throne, that was his tongue lapping against him, and he could feel the benevolent smile curling of his lips around his cock.

He heard himself shout as he came, Guilliman sucking around him, seeing nothing as his eyes rolled back in his head, feeling only the glory of it. Who could last with something like that, and it had been, he realised, far too long since he’d touched himself, let alone permitted another to touch him.

Guilliman pulled back, licking his lips and looking deeply satisfied and totally without shame. However contented (and hot, how dare he be so gorgeous) he looked and how freely he gave, Sigismund couldn’t help the sparks of guilt that told him he was made to serve. ‘Please,’ he said again, ‘permit me to touch you, my lord. I am yours to command.’

Guilliman chuckled, a deep, low rumble like a mountain shifting, but let his eyes wander Sigismund’s form appreciatively. ‘Even if I intended to deny you, I don’t know if I could, with how you look offering yourself up to me.’

He kissed him again and lifted Sigismund to his chest to spread him down over the couch. Sigismund wrapped his arms around him and held close, feeling the muscles in his chest and back flex against him.

Guilliman pulled back enough to undress him completely, and Sigismund went to work on his belt as well. He groaned as Sigismund groped him through his clothes, and he loved the feel of him under his fingers, huge and rigid and he wasn’t even fully hard yet. Then they were skin against skin, and Sigismund could feel the heat of him, the smoothness of his skin, how his cock twitched in his hand as he stroked it.

Guilliman kissed him and sucked spots across his neck and chest, but his hands were steadying his hips, pressing a slicked finger inside him when he hadn’t even seen him procure lube from a pocket.

It was gasping anticipation as Guilliman prepared him. He spread his legs easily, forced himself to relax, when he so desperately, helplessly wanted. The wait was maddening, but he had the throb of Guilliman’s erection in his hand in time to his heartsbeat to reassure him he was impatiently desired in turn. Finally, finally, Guilliman pulled his hand away and let Sigismund guide him against his entrance.

He knew later his treacherous mind would plague him with dreams that were half memory, half fantasy of it being Dorn who he took in, but he could hate himself when he got to that. For now he never looked away from the fact it was Guilliman, and that was a hell of a thing in and of itself. Ultramarines were beholden to the idea of using available resources to maximum effect, and he could hardly imagine the thought process that had lead to their lord fucking him into the couch.

He burned to be stretched so wide, filled so deeply, and Guilliman was still holding back, but he wouldn’t have traded it for the world. Not just the friction and solidity of the hardness inside him, but being embraced like this as he was taken, not being forgiven but being ordered to put his sins on hold. He luxuriated in it, not even realising what he’d been missing, like the first hot shower after a long campaign in the mud. It was only temporary, he deserved--but he could put that thought aside and arch into Guilliman’s thrusts.

He was only a shadow of what he’d been before, but a glimpse of what it had been like to not have the crushing weight of his failures on him was enough. He loved sex, loved physicality in a bed or on a battlefield, loved the way Guilliman’s hips sped up even after Sigismund had been worn into a heap from primarch stamina, loved the approving sounds he made even after his own voice broke, loved being wanted, loved the way he could make even the most stoic Legionnares stare at his ass after him because that was just the sexy bastard he was--almost, almost he would remember the arrogant swagger he’d once had.

He wasn’t sure of what moment exactly it ended, after a long stretched of being too overwhelmed to do anything but feel and dig his fingers into the primarch’s shoulders. At some point they must have progressed from the height of passion to something softer and sweeter, because he was being held between Guilliman’s chest and the soft cushions of the back of the couch, fully enveloped in warmth, panting and too satisfied to care about how sticky they were.

Guilliman was stroking his hair again, the connection points for his armour along his back. ‘Rest now,’ he said--ordered.

Sigismund could hardly keep his eyes open despite himself, but a stray thought occurred to him. ‘You budgeted this into the deployment timetable, didn’t you? Throne, you did.’

‘Tell me in an hour if I misestimated,’ he said lightly. ‘I can be wrong,’ he added, sounding vaguely offended even though Sigismund hadn’t said anything.

It wasn’t Dorn--it wasn’t what he needed--but maybe not everything that existed in the galaxy was vile or dead or fallen, and that was something, for now even enough.


	2. Chapter 2

‘I had sex with Sigismund.’

Dorn, stoic, self-contained Dorn, winced in a whole body motion, despite himself. ‘I can’t believe you felt the need to say that to me, Roboute.’

‘Would you please,’ Guilliman used the better position he had purposefully made sure he was in to hold Dorn back from reaching for his pants and picking himself up from his bed, ‘give me the benefit of the doubt that I didn’t say that for the purpose of hurting you. I knew it would, but did it anyway.’

‘You do that,’ Dorn said, because there could never be a lack of bitterness between them, never be what there was that one moment when they clasped hands after Terra but before Guilliman’s usurpation, let alone before anything ever happened to their family.

‘I thought of not telling you. You hate the idea of living happily in ignorance, but I considered not respecting that. Eventually I decided you should know, or I’d have accomplished only half of my goals.’

Through gritted teeth, Dorn asked, ‘Then why did you do it? Wasn’t it enough you already stole my... Legion?’

‘I didn’t steal your favourite son. It was never me he wanted, not more than a little, but you. I did what I could because you could not.’

‘Do you know why?’ Dorn’s voice was low, a whisper, a growl.

‘He didn’t tell me, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t want to know, because I’d rather avoid another civil war over difference in opinion.’

‘You think my reasons foolish, whatever they are?’

Guilliman nodded, gravely, honestly, against his shoulder. ‘We are not nearly as much alike as some would make us out to be.’

‘Why then? Why tell me?’

‘Because you love him. Because you want him to be happy. I wanted you to know that just for a moment, even without your forgiveness, he could be, though it was a pale imitation.’

Dorn breathed deeply, his eyes closed. Guilliman knew him too well, knew the power of _honesty_ upon him, and his inability to deny what he wanted so much to, even to himself. Inhale, exhale. Filling his lungs and returning to break the stillness of the dark.

‘Do you expect me to thank you?’ he asked finally.

‘No. I wanted you to know that good things can exist, still. That I can give you, when I can’t wrap you in my arms like I did him, brother.’ Which seemed an odd thing to say when they were naked in his bed, but it was true. They were both primarchs and there was too much between them for Dorn to give him the submission he craved, which was the most natural thing in the world from an Astartes to a primarch, or take a full measure of the comfort he needed. ‘When you can’t hold him like you both need.’

‘Stop.’

‘No. He shook to not buckle under the weight of wanting to be perfect enough to be worthy of you, but even broken he’s so strong and so beautiful. He makes war with the righteous fury of the Emperor’s Champion, but nothing else compared to seeing, for a moment, him not regret being alive. I have many sons I can take pride in, but none who cast such a shadow on reality as the Black Knight. I envy you for being the one he loves.’

Another _‘stop’_ caught in Dorn’s throat, because he did not think he could say it without it coming out as a plea.

‘I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable with the sordid details, but it was almost like seeing him as he once was, while he was enjoying himself.’ What a thing to worry about when they were in bed together, but it reflected the heart of the matter. What he and Roboute had done had been physically gratifying, but not more so than what they did in the practice cages. Just thinking about what ‘sordid details’ might be with Sigismund involved made him hot and cold all over. Imagining how beautiful Sigismund must have looked spread out under Roboute, moaning and shivering with ecstasy. How he would glow if Dorn had been the one touching him. Throne, he’d always wanted to touch him, had never stopped, had never been able to stop. ‘I don’t regret pleasing him or, I hope, you.’

‘You always think you know better, don’t you?’

‘Get your own house in order and we can talk.’ No pity, no regret. Guilliman did not reach out and try to touch him or hold him for comfort, because that wasn’t what they did and not something he would have allowed. Only in this second-hand way could they reach each other, Guilliman caring for the thing he loved most in the world.

‘It’s not up to you to judge me.’

‘No,’ he said, and said no more to Dorn, not of condemnation or forgiveness.


End file.
